scholarly journals Multi-Temporal Loess Landslide Inventory Mapping with C-, X- and L-Band SAR Datasets—A Case Study of Heifangtai Loess Landslides, China

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1756 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaojie Liu ◽  
Chaoying Zhao ◽  
Qin Zhang ◽  
Jianbing Peng ◽  
Wu Zhu ◽  
...  

The Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique is a well-developed remote sensing tool which has been widely used in the investigation of landslides. Average deformation rates are calculated by weighted averaging (stacking) of the interferograms to detect small-scale loess landslides. Heifangtai loess terrace, Gansu province China, is taken as a test area. Aiming to generate multi-temporal landslide inventory maps and to analyze the landslide evolution features from December 2006 to November 2017, a large number of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) datasets acquired by L-band ascending ALOS/PALSAR, L-band ascending and descending ALOS/PALSAR-2, X-band ascending and descending TerraSAR-X and C-band descending Sentinel-1A/B images covering different evolution stages of Heifangtai terrace are fully exploited. Firstly, the surface deformation of Heifangtai terrace is calculated for independent SAR data using the InSAR technique. Subsequently, InSAR-derived deformation maps, SAR intensity images and a DEM gradient map are jointly used to detect potential loess landslides by setting the appropriate thresholds. More than 40 active loess landslides are identified and mapped. The accuracy of the landslide identification results is verified by comparison with published literatures, the results of geological field surveys and remote sensing images. Furthermore, the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of the landslides during the last 11 years are revealed for the first time. Finally, strengths and limitations of different wavelength SAR data, and the effects of track direction, geometric distortions of SAR images and the differences in local incidence angle between two adjacent satellite tracks in terms of small-scale loess landslides identification, are analyzed and summarized, and some suggestions are given to guide the future identification of small-scale loess landslides with the InSAR technique.

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jolanda Patruno ◽  
Magdalena Fitrzyk ◽  
Jose Manuel Delgado Blasco

In remote sensing for archaeology, an unequivocal method capable of automatic detection of archaeological features still does not exists. Applications of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing for archaeology mainly focus on high spatial resolution SAR sensors, which allow the recognition of structures of small dimension and give information of the surface topography of sites. In this study we investigated the potential of combined dual and fully polarized SAR data and performed polarimetric multi-frequency and multi-incidence angle analysis of C-band Sentinel-1, L-band Advanced Land Observing Satellite Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS PALSAR) and of C-band Radar Satellite-2 (RADARSAT-2) datasets for the detection of surface and subsurface archaeological structures over the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) site of Gebel Barkal (Sudan). While PALSAR offers a good historical reference, Sentinel-1 time series provide recent and systematic monitoring opportunities. RADARSAT-2 polarimetric data have been specifically acquired in 2012/2013, and have been scheduled to achieve a multi-temporal observation of the archaeological area under study. This work demonstrated how to exploit a complex but significant dataset composed of SAR full polarimetric and dual polarimetric acquisitions, with the purpose of identifying the most suitable earth observation technique for the preservation and identification of archaeological features. The scientific potential of the illustrated analysis fits perfectly with the current delicate needs of cultural heritage; such analysis demonstrates how multi-temporal and multi-data cultural heritage monitoring can be applied not only for documentation purposes, but can be addressed especially to those areas exposed to threats of different nature that require a constant and prompt intervention plans.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 604
Author(s):  
Donato Amitrano ◽  
Gerardo Di Martino ◽  
Raffaella Guida ◽  
Pasquale Iervolino ◽  
Antonio Iodice ◽  
...  

Microwave remote sensing has widely demonstrated its potential in the continuous monitoring of our rapidly changing planet. This review provides an overview of state-of-the-art methodologies for multi-temporal synthetic aperture radar change detection and its applications to biosphere and hydrosphere monitoring, with special focus on topics like forestry, water resources management in semi-arid environments and floods. The analyzed literature is categorized on the base of the approach adopted and the data exploited and discussed in light of the downstream remote sensing market. The purpose is to highlight the main issues and limitations preventing the diffusion of synthetic aperture radar data in both industrial and multidisciplinary research contexts and the possible solutions for boosting their usage among end-users.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 1304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusupujiang Aimaiti ◽  
Fumio Yamazaki ◽  
Wen Liu

In earthquake-prone areas, identifying patterns of ground deformation is important before they become latent risk factors. As one of the severely damaged areas due to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan, Urayasu City in Chiba Prefecture has been suffering from land subsidence as a part of its land was built by a massive land-fill project. To investigate the long-term land deformation patterns in Urayasu City, three sets of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data acquired during 1993–2006 from European Remote Sensing satellites (ERS-1/-2 (C-band)), during 2006–2010 from the Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar onboard the Advanced Land Observation Satellite (ALOS PALSAR (L-band)) and from 2014–2017 from the ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 (L-band) were processed by using multitemporal interferometric SAR (InSAR) techniques. Leveling survey data were also used to verify the accuracy of the InSAR-derived results. The results from the ERS-1/-2, ALOS PALSAR and ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 data processing showed continuing subsidence in several reclaimed areas of Urayasu City due to the integrated effects of numerous natural and anthropogenic processes. The maximum subsidence rate of the period from 1993 to 2006 was approximately 27 mm/year, while the periods from 2006 to 2010 and from 2014 to 2017 were approximately 30 and 18 mm/year, respectively. The quantitative validation results of the InSAR-derived deformation trend during the three observation periods are consistent with the leveling survey data measured from 1993 to 2017. Our results further demonstrate the advantages of InSAR measurements as an alternative to ground-based measurements for land subsidence monitoring in coastal reclaimed areas.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 1907-1929
Author(s):  
Georg Pointner ◽  
Annett Bartsch ◽  
Yury A. Dvornikov ◽  
Alexei V. Kouraev

Abstract. Regions of anomalously low backscatter in C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery of lake ice of Lake Neyto in northwestern Siberia have been suggested to be caused by emissions of gas (methane from hydrocarbon reservoirs) through the lake’s sediments. However, to assess this connection, only analyses of data from boreholes in the vicinity of Lake Neyto and visual comparisons to medium-resolution optical imagery have been provided due to a lack of in situ observations of the lake ice itself. These observations are impeded due to accessibility and safety issues. Geospatial analyses and innovative combinations of satellite data sources are therefore proposed to advance our understanding of this phenomenon. In this study, we assess the nature of the backscatter anomalies in Sentinel-1 C-band SAR images in combination with very high resolution (VHR) WorldView-2 optical imagery. We present methods to automatically map backscatter anomaly regions from the C-band SAR data (40 m pixel spacing) and holes in lake ice from the VHR data (0.5 m pixel spacing) and examine their spatial relationships. The reliability of the SAR method is evaluated through comparison between different acquisition modes. The results show that the majority of mapped holes (71 %) in the VHR data are clearly related to anomalies in SAR imagery acquired a few days earlier, and similarities to SAR imagery acquired more than a month before are evident, supporting the hypothesis that anomalies may be related to gas emissions. Further, a significant expansion of backscatter anomaly regions in spring is documented and quantified in all analysed years 2015 to 2019. Our study suggests that the backscatter anomalies might be caused by lake ice subsidence and consequent flooding through the holes over the ice top leading to wetting and/or slushing of the snow around the holes, which might also explain outcomes of polarimetric analyses of auxiliary L-band Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar-2 (PALSAR-2) data. C-band SAR data are considered to be valuable for the identification of lakes showing similar phenomena across larger areas in the Arctic in future studies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 2228
Author(s):  
Marco Ottinger ◽  
Claudia Kuenzer

The coastal zone offers among the world’s most productive and valuable ecosystems and is experiencing increasing pressure from anthropogenic impacts: human settlements, agriculture, aquaculture, trade, industrial activities, oil and gas exploitation and tourism. Earth observation has great capability to deliver valuable data at the local, regional and global scales and can support the assessment and monitoring of land- and water-related applications in coastal zones. Compared to optical satellites, cloud-cover does not limit the timeliness of data acquisition with spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors, which have all-weather, day and night capabilities. Hence, active radar systems demonstrate great potential for continuous mapping and monitoring of coastal regions, particularly in cloud-prone tropical and sub-tropical climates. The canopy penetration capability with long radar wavelength enables L-band SAR data to be used for coastal terrestrial environments and has been widely applied and investigated for the following geoscientific topics: mapping and monitoring of flooded vegetation and inundated areas; the retrieval of aboveground biomass; and the estimation of soil moisture. Human activities, global population growth, urban sprawl and climate change-induced impacts are leading to increased pressure on coastal ecosystems causing land degradation, deforestation and land use change. This review presents a comprehensive overview of existing research articles that apply spaceborne L-band SAR data for geoscientific analyses that are relevant for coastal land applications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 4516
Author(s):  
Helen Blue Parache ◽  
Timothy Mayer ◽  
Kelsey E. Herndon ◽  
Africa Ixmucane Flores-Anderson ◽  
Yang Lei ◽  
...  

Forest stand height (FSH), or average canopy height, serves as an important indicator for forest monitoring. The information provided about above-ground biomass for greenhouse gas emissions reporting and estimating carbon storage is relevant for reporting for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). A novel forest height estimation method utilizing a fusion of backscatter and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data from JAXA’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS PALSAR) is applied to a use case in Savannakhet, Lao. Compared with LiDAR, the estimated height from the fusion method had an RMSE of 4.90 m and an R2 of 0.26. These results are comparable to previous studies using SAR estimation techniques. Despite limitations of data quality and quantity, the Savannakhet, Lao use case demonstrates the applicability of these techniques utilizing L-band SAR data for estimating FSH in tropical forests and can be used as a springboard for use of L-band data from the future NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) mission.


Author(s):  
A. K. Verma ◽  
R. Nandan ◽  
A. Verma

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Space-based observation of crops and agro-system on the Earth surface is one of the most important applications of remote sensing using the sensors in optical and microwave spectrum to assess the crop growth for decision making for developing crop information and management system. Remote sensing technology provides scalable and reliable information in respect of rice crop grown area, its crop growth and prediction of crop yield due to acquisition of satellite imagery during the revisit of the orbit by space-borne sensors in optical and microwave spectrum. Synthetic Aperture Radar has the advantages of all-weather, day and night imaging, canopy penetration, and high-resolution capabilities, which makes Space-borne SAR sensors as an effective system for monitoring crop growth, crop classification and mapping of crop area based on the crop canopy interaction of SAR signals due to backscattering coefficients of the earth surface. SAR data from ERS-1/2 SAR, ENVISAT ASAR, ALOS-1/2 PALSAR, Radarsat-1/2 SAR, TerraSAR, COSMO-SkyMed, and Sentinel-1 have been used by various researchers for identification and analysis of rice crop growth based on the backscattering values in different regions of Asia and European region, where backscattered image depends of various earth surface and SAR sensors parameters. In this paper, knowledge based classifier using SAR images of existing space-borne-SAR sensors have been developed based on modeling of SAR backscattering coefficients in C-band and X-band for monitoring the rice crop growth and its analysis using multi-temporal and multi-frequency- SAR sensors data.</p>


Author(s):  
E. Edwar ◽  
Achmad Munir

One of the popular remote sensing technique is remote sensing using radar technology such as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). In this paper, a compact SAR prototype transmitter was designed so it could be installed in small platform. This SAR transmitter was designed to generate a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) using direct digital synthesizer (DDS) integrated with RF front end modules such as analog filter and power amplifier. The bandwidth of the radar spectrum is 10 MHz, and the carrier frequency used is 1.27 GHz. The L-Band has been chosen as the carrier signal in order to detect the target (trees). The payload was designed for aerial vehicle, hence the choice of components should be as small as possible. The FMCW-SAR transmitter was implemented by using DDS module AD9850 and integrated with another RF component. The FMCW-SAR transmitter produces the transmit power about -17.67 dBm.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (23) ◽  
pp. 6877
Author(s):  
Bing Li ◽  
Zemin Wang ◽  
Jiachun An ◽  
Baojun Zhang ◽  
Hong Geng ◽  
...  

The ionospheric error can significantly affect the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signals, particularly in the case of L band and lower frequency SAR systems. The ionospheric distortions are mixed with terrain and ground deformation signals, lowering the precision of the interferometric measurements. Moreover, it is often difficult to detect the small-scale ionospheric structure due to its rapid changes and may have more influence on ionospheric phase compensation for InSAR measurements. In this paper, we present a Faraday rotation (FR) inversion method and corresponding procedure to compensate the ionospheric error for SAR interferograms and to detect the variations of small-scale ionospheric disturbances. This method retrieves the absolute total electron content (TEC) based on the FR estimation and corrects the ionospheric error for synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) measurements by transforming the differential TEC into the ionospheric phase. In two selected study cases, located in high latitude and equatorial regions where ionospheric disturbances occur frequently, we test the method using the Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) full-polarimetric SAR images. Our results show that the proposed procedure can effectively compensate the ionospheric phase. In order to validate the results, we present the results of ionospheric phase compensation based on the split-spectrum method as a comparison to the proposed method. To analyze the ability of our proposed method in detecting small-scale ionospheric disturbances, TEC derived from FR estimation are also compared with those derived from the global ionosphere maps (GIM). Our research provides a robust choice for the correction of ionospheric error in SAR interferograms. It also provides a powerful tool to measure small-scale ionospheric structure.


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